Colombia Paramilitaries OK Special Zone During Talks

Colombia’s outlawed right-wing paramilitary groups agreed Thursday to move into a special zone as they negotiate eventual demobilization, government officials said.

Peace Commissioner Luis Carlos Restrepo signed the pact Thursday with commanders of the anti-guerrilla United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, or AUC, at a paramilitary stronghold in northwest Colombia, Vice President Francisco Santos said.

A government official said AUC leaders agreed to have the outlawed paramilitary militias move into a special zone near Santa Fe de Ralito, 280 miles northwest of Bogota.

Once there, they will be monitored by representatives of the Organization of American States.

The breakthrough in peace talks with the paramilitaries came as troops and police captured 43 suspected Marxist rebels armed with explosives and shotguns as they allegedly prepared for terrorist attacks in the capital.

The suspected members of Colombia’s main rebel group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, were captured in various operations near Sumapaz, 22 miles southeast of Bogota, Gen. Hernando Alonso Ortiz of the Army’s 5th division told reporters.

Bogota has been the site of several deadly urban terrorist attacks in recent years. But the city of 7 million, perched in the Andes mountains, has remained free of the daily violence associated with Colombia’s 39-year-old guerrilla conflict.

Colombia’s long civil war has pitted the rebels against the paramilitary factions and government forces. It has killed about 3,500 people a year.

Paramilitary forces, said to number at least 12,000 fighters, emerged in the 1980s to battle the rebels. They quickly wound up waging their own dirty war of killings and massacres.

The AUC now funds much of its military operations through cocaine trafficking and is considered a terrorist organization by the United States.